This was in 1833, when he was about twenty years of age.

He took the book home, looked over it carelessly, and threw it aside.

Disappointed of his degree at two competitive examinations, he fell sick, and saw a vision of an old man, saying: "I am the Creator of all things.

Go and do my work." After this vision six years passed by, when the English war broke out, and the English fleet took the Chinese forts in the river of Canton.

Such a great national calamity indicated, according to Chinese ideas, something rotten in the government; and such success on the part of the English showed that, in some way, they were fulfilling the will of Heaven.